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Modern Mix: Curating Personal Style with Chic & Accessible Finds
208Overview
In this richly illustrated style guide from an unabashed hoarder of all things beautiful, design editor and entertaining expert Eddie Ross reveals his insider secrets to creating exciting interiors, table settings and parties with chic and accessible finds that celebrate who you are and what you love.
Featuring never-before-published photographs of Eddie’s own homes—his eclectic apartment in New York and Pine Hill Farm in Connecticut—Modern Mix cracks the code to navigating thrift shops, yard sales and flea markets with confidence. Funny and insightful, Eddie is like a trusted friend on the front lines of flea markets and thrifting, telling you what to look for, where to find it and how to restore it. Then he shows you how to use color and pattern to infuse your finds with a fresh, playful spirit, combining high and low, new and old, classic and modern elements into a warm and inviting style that expresses your personality.
In each of the book’s eight chapters—Inspire, Discover, Acquire, Restore, Curate, Mix, Style and Entertain—Eddie builds upon the essential insights he reveals at every turn, culminating in a gorgeous grand finale of gawk-worthy rooms, table settings, bars, buffets and parties.
With more than 350 full-color photographs, time-saving tips and real-life shortcuts to decorating and entertaining beautifully on a budget, Modern Mix will open your eyes to the extraordinary possibilities within your reach and inspire you to live every day colorfully and creatively.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781423637356 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Smith, Gibbs Publisher |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2015 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 9.60(w) x 11.60(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
EDDIE ROSS is the East Coast Editor of Better Homes & Gardens. He has worked as a design, decorating and food editor for House Beautiful, Martha Stewart Living and Food Network. Recognized by design aficionados for his inventive, out-of-the-box approach to high-style decorating and entertaining on a budget, Eddie has re-imagined the aesthetic possibilities in secondhand finds, imbuing them with a chic and colorful sophistication within everyone’s reach. His sold-out tours of flea markets across the country have empowered legions of devoted followers to find the best things they canand, at the same time, to give fresh, new life to what they may already own.
A trained chef from the Culinary Institute of America, Eddie has styled parties and table settings featured in House Beautiful, Southern Living and InStyle. His design work has been published in Domino, Vanity Fair, Country Living and the New York Times. He also appeared in Bravo’s interior design competition series Top Design and entertaining specials for HGTV.
JAITHAN KOCHAR has designed the interiors of restaurants, clubs, hotels and retail environments around the globe. He has written for national and regional publications, including Better Homes & Gardens, Southern Living and Hamptons magazines. He is a graduate of the Lawrenceville School in Princeton, New Jersey. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from StanfordUniversity and a Master of Interior Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Read an Excerpt
I am not a wealthy man, but I know how they live.
My grandfather Eddie was the son of Polish immigrants; he met my grandmother Dottie at the Electrolux factory in Stamford, Connecticut, where they worked, and eventually they settled in Greenwich. My father, Walter, worked for the town, trimming trees and maintaining its parks; my mother, Margie, stayed at home, raising four boys almost entirely herself. While most of the other kids at school spoke of private planes and sleep-away camps, I enjoyed my summers in the garden helping my grandfather plant flowers, or in the kitchen with my mother making pierogi. We were a close-knit family, living under one roof, holding onto our Polish traditions.
In high school, I worked at a catering company washing dishes, scrubbing floors and taking out the trash. When the holidays came and we were shortstaffed in the kitchen, I once arranged a crudité of vegetables on a grapevine sleigh with an eggplant sliced lengthwise and hollowed out for dip. It really wasn’t any different from the flower arrangements I’d help my grandfather make growing up. Soon, I started working parties at grand estates, where I passed mini crab cakes on sterling silver trays and served Beluga caviar on mother of-pearl spoons. As a caterer, I peered into the cabinets of magnificent kitchens, looking for a single pitcher, only to find a hundred. Big pitchers, little pitchers—porcelain, glass and silver. I opened drawers in butler’s pantries with more serving pieces than Buckingham Palace. Long forks with four tines and short forks with two tines. Spoons with round bowls, oval bowls and spoons with teeth. There were toast racks and teapots, samovars and soup tureens, compotes and cake stands. China came with markings and linens with letters. Every piece had a story—a history—whether handed down or happened upon in some faraway place. Of course, I owned none of these things myself and would inherit little of the sort. But in the sublime beauty of coffee served delicately in a Herend Chinese Bouquet demitasse cup, paired with a sterling silver Tiffany Audubon spoon, I glimpsed another kind of life.
Catering parties in Greenwich, I saw how the wealthy entertain. Styling homes for House Beautiful, I saw how they decorate. Oil paintings in living rooms hung splendidly over mantels flanked by cloisonné vases, Staffordshire dogs and Baccarat candlesticks. On bookcases and étagères, collections of blue-and white porcelain punctuated stacks of beautiful books. Bar carts took center stage, stocked with silver cocktail shakers, gilded tumblers, and handblown glass decanters.
Lacquered trays adorned coffee tables with Venetian glass bowls and vases filled with flowers. Boxes came in brass, shagreen, tortoiseshell and alabaster. Obelisks were made of marble, malachite, lapis and agate. Chinoiserie figurines rubbed elbows with African statues. Natural curiosities lent whimsy. Crystal added glamour. Everywhere I looked, captivating combinations of furniture, textiles, art and objects told deeply personal stories of who lived there, where they’d been and what they loved. In every treasure, trinket, knickknack and artifact, there was a life well lived—and I found it at the flea market. Not all of us were born with a silver spoon in our mouths, but we can pretend, can’t we?
Table of Contents
4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
7 FOREWORD
9 INSPIRE
21 DISCOVER
59 ACQUIRE
81 RESTORE
107 CURATE
141 MIX
169 STYLE
193 ENTERTAIN
224 AFTERWORD